Non-fiction examination of Czech society’s ills lands literary prize

The prestigious Magnesia Litera Award for the Czech book of the year has
gone to a work called Opuštěná společnost or Abandoned Society by
journalist Erik Tabery. Prizes in six other categories were also handed out
at Wednesday’s awards in Prague.

Erik Tabery, photo: CTK
After a four year break, the main prize Magnesia Book of the Year has once
again gone to a work of non-fiction. The book essay by Erik Tabery, a
long-time editor-in-chief of the weekly Respekt, is subtitled ‘The Czech
Journey from Masaryk to Babiš’ and describes the dangers Czech society
is facing from newly emerged populist leaders.

According to Tabery, the title ‘Abandoned Society’ refers to the state
of current Czech society, which, he says, is lacking the clear vision it
used to have under the presidencies of Czechoslovak founder Tomáš
Garrigue Masaryk or later under Václav Havel.

This is what the author said when he was handed the main prize:

“My book is called Abandoned Society and I wrote it to make society
less
abandoned. I tried to find some sources of inspiration, and I think there a
lot of them. There are many people who have experience from the past.

Marek Švehla, photo: CTK“I would like to thank the people I often meet as a journalist who
are
working on making our society less abandoned. They are politicians, but
also people helping those on the edge of the society, and I think their
work should really be acknowledged.”

In his book, released by Paseka publishing house, Tabery claims the Czech
Republic has not succeeded in fulfilling its vision of returning to Europe,
and it also lacks any clear plan for the future.

Speaking at the award ceremony, Tabery said he drew on the themes he
encountered over the years of working as a journalist and decided some of
the themes and topics deserved to be explored in greater detail.

The Book of the Year was not the only award for the weekly Respekt.
Tabery’s colleague Marek Švehla won the Discovery of the Year for his
book ‘Magor a jeho doba’ or ‘Magor and His Era’, an autobiography
about one of the legends of the Czech underground movement during the 1970s
and 1980s, Ivan Martin Jirous.

Josef Pánek, photo: CTK
The closely watched Magnesia Litera for best work of prose went to Josef
Pánek’s novel ‘Láska v době globálních klimatických změn’
(‘Love in the Time of Global Climatic Change’).
The unconventional travelogue set in India and Iceland is the first novel
of the author, who is a molecular genetics scientist by profession.

Magnesia Litera, which is the main prize-giving event for Czech literature,
was
established in 2002. Prizes in six other categories were also handed out at
Wednesday’s awards ceremony at Prague’s New Stage of the National
Theatre, including the Best Translation, which went to Radvan Markus for
this translation of the Irish novel The Churchyard’s Soil.